Proxy
by A Rusted Heart
Summary: It's after the Fall and Sherlock is stuck being dead. Sadly, everyone he ever knew or cared about is still in the land of the living. Like any other ghost, he can't speak to them, can't see them, can't help when they need him. But whilst attacking the remains of Moriarty's organization he meets somebody who might be able to help. A medium, if you like. A proxy.
1. Sherlock

The funny thing about facts is you don't always know they're there. A thing can be a fact, and sit there squat and concrete and bold as you or I, and go _completely_ unnoticed for a long, long time. This is because the world is made of facts. You can't notice them all. It would drive you very swiftly mad. Or worse, drive you to believing that the only way to maintain your sanity is to hold all those awful facts at bay with certain not-entirely legal substances.

The second is an option only for the brave and very clever, or the catastrophically stupid. Ideally both. And I do not recommend it even to either of those classes.

But I digress. The point to be expounded is simply this; sometimes you don't notice a fact until it is no longer a fact.

For instance, it was only recently that I came to realize I had never really been alone. Separated, yes. Apart, yes. Aside and above and beneath others, yes, and _lonely_, oh, lonely, God, yes. But not alone.

Alone is a very different thing to lonely. And there are those who would have you believe it is the lesser of the two evils. Don't believe them. Don't believe them. The next time they try and make you think that way, remember that I said it; do not believe them. Alone is lonely and then some. Alone, really alone. Just think about it. Alone is when there is no one else in the world to whom you are telling the truth. Alone is not just when there is nobody there, but when there is nobody to call. Alone is when nobody knows you.

Sometimes I have to remind myself which is my true name among the aliases, because there is no one to address me by it.

I was never truly alone until I was dead. Of course, it's absolutely necessary. There is, therefore, absolutely no point in complaining about it. You'll notice, reading carefully, that I wasn't complaining at all, not even to begin with. I was merely stating that it is a fact. Given that my personal feelings on this state of existence are entirely irrelevant, I have not elaborated on them and I do not intend to. My only intention, from the first word to this one, was to make you aware that this is how things stand. This is a fact that I have recently noticed, and which I have been allowing to occupy my thoughts perhaps a little too much.

I thought I'd record it, you see? As if making it physical, concrete, might make it a fact, and then it could fade away. But it seems that's rather a one-way theory…

At any rate, there are more important developments that ought to be recorded. They are unrelated and it may well settle my mind to think on those instead. Goodbye, then, to the word 'alone', at least for tonight.

As has been discussed in previous entries, recent efforts towards the eventual goal (i.e. the dismantling _in toto_ of what remains of the Moriarty organization) have been experimentally targeted at facilitators rather than actors. For instance, ten common household poisonings, not to mention the Study in Pink, were solved at a blow by the arrest of toxin chemist Penny Corcoran.

Taxi case. Not _the Study In Pink_, for Christ's sake. The Taxi case. Damn it…

With the Corcoran arrest having thus proved the efficacy of the concept, I was encouraged to attempt the same again.

The various researches and deductions detailed in previous entries all led to one conclusion. So many of the criminal endeavours investigated required long term surveillance of the victim. This allows details to be gathered relating to personal preferences, to routines, to the secrets that public persons keep behind closed doors. Only surveillance of this sort, close and constant and very high-level, can tell the blackmailer where to find the mistress, the assassin the best time to shoot, the thief when the house is least guarded.

I often wonder what it might have been like to face this elegant, self-sufficient army before madness took hold of its general. Now, without central leadership, I have only to knock over small cells, out of touch, unaware of how vulnerable they are. But then, at the height of it… If only I'd known. But that's a bleak thought. All the more worrying is the way I keep coming back to it. All I really mean to say is that surveillance, like everything else from the cornerstones to the roof, was always done very professionally. A discreet, reliable service, that left no trace and as such could be called in over and over again without concern.

That was the mistake, obviously; repeat anything enough and it leaves a trace. Writing very lightly will not mark the page beneath, but if you keep going over and over the same lines, that's a different story.

Looking at twenty-six separate cases, eight of which ended in arrests and police inquiry were found to share one common factor. A witness was questioned and released without charge, then disappeared before she could testify in court. In every case this witness was a new neighbour, present for six weeks at the very longest. The names were always different, but names are nothing. A name means nothing until somebody calls you by it. Transient, forgettable things.

But in one case, fingerprints were taken. Those do not change and are attached to records, records full of facts. Facts, well-applied, lead to truths.

I found her. Her name, this morning, was Nola Saint, and she was living in a small, well-furnished Brighton townhouse. Between jobs, and bored by the looks of things; she took herself out to breakfast, then for a walk along the front, bought fresh fruit and then went home again. In all of this, the only person she spoke to was the café waitress.

I'm not sure why it was I noticed that. Certainly, given her itinerary, you wouldn't expect any further interaction, would you? Maybe it was the way her lips would move sometimes, as if she had something to say and only lacked someone to say it to.

Perhaps I should send her a tape recorder.

Come the afternoon I sought to gain entry to the house by posing as a member of the local constabulary in plain clothes. This has generally been found to be successful; nobody wants to argue with a copper, it seems.

However, upon my producing my painstakingly forged identification – because one does not simply let a forger go scot-free when one is supposed to be dead – this mercenary began to laugh.

For the record, the lady in question is five-foot-four in height with green eyes and a barely perceptible white scar to the side of the left eye, should she ever need to be identified. She is also in possession of an incredibly cruel laugh, when she wants to be. "Put that away," she said. "And come in."

The kettle was already boiled when I knocked the door. I knew this to be a trick, having used it once or twice myself; it proves to any unwanted visitor that they are incapable of surprising you. This, and certain tensions in her walk and facial expression unworthy of recording here, made it clear that she was afraid. Ms Saint had only very few cards to play and had to be careful with them. Still, I must admit, it rather threw me off to be invited in so casually as that. I followed mute. She made tea and I could only really let her. The sensation was strange. Here was proximity with another person, in the context of neither interrogation nor reconnaissance.

Strange, estranged… Must think that one over.

Because I didn't speak, she felt the need to. "I saw you," she told me. Another ploy meant to throw me off my guard. She hadn't quite thought it through; this admission completely undercut the effect of the boiled kettle, took away all the premonition that makes that gesture so effective. Nonetheless, she put tea down between us in mismatched mugs and I let her continue. "This morning. And I knew you were coming; you've been looking into me."

I expected nothing less of her. She is, in essence, a spy, and one quick and competent enough for Moriarty to have trusted on quite a number of occasions. I would have been more suspicious had she told me I had sneaked up on her.

What I did not expect was what Ms Saint said next. _She_, to _me_; "I want some answers."

Interesting, no? When I was the one who was there for answers, after all. Details, incriminating facts, the names of associates; all the things I needed before I could turn her in for good and all. And there she was demanding answers of me. Why on earth I let her get away with it, I do not know. Maybe it was just the novelty.

Her first question, "Where is he?" And thought I knew what she meant I made her go through the motions, _where is who_, that whole business. She floundered at that. "I… I don't have a name. The boss. You know who I mean, that's the only reason you could be here."

"What do you know about him?"

And she, quite candidly, "Naff all. He's a voice on the phone, calls with the jobs. Where is he?"

I told her, "Dead." She swore and hung her head, but she had expected it. This was just confirmation. I let her have her grief. Had it been personal, I wouldn't have, but this was all business. This was a good boss, a string of good jobs, all gone from her. She mourned the work and not the man. I let her have it.

At this, I was about to start making my own demands. I had spoken and had an effect on her; somehow that brought back the control, put me into my accustomed frame of mind again. I was much more comfortable.

Ms Saint, however, never let me speak. Recovering with incredible speed from her slump she launched a terrifically dangerous gambit; "Then I know who you are and what you're supposed to be right now." Following fast, "That's not a threat." She said, "That's just a fact. Here's another fact; I know what you want too."

Another day, I might have told her I doubted that. But then again, I didn't know what she was going to say. And when I tried to think about it, there seemed to be nothing. I couldn't think of a single thing. Dead men, after all, want for nothing.

Then again, she _had_ just pointed out that I am not, in fact, dead.

"You want me to work for you." I thought that ridiculous. A silly thing to try. For a moment, I was at my ease again. Her argument, the logic that was supposed to shield her from all harm, was nothing but a house of cards. I was ready to breathe and knock it all over. One more time, she cut me off. "Don't laugh at me," she said. "You haven't even thought about it yet. Think about it for a half a second and you'll realize I'm absolutely right." Word tripping over word. She spoke quickly so that I wouldn't have _time _to think. She would lead me, and I would believe these were my own conclusions I was coming to. She spoke and kept speaking so not even the sound of my own voice would anchor me. She was elegant, yes, Machiavellian, but I had seen through her. It can have no effect when you see through it. So I sat back, content to let her talk. Let her work through it, I thought to myself. Study her rhetoric; after all, this is part of how she earns her living. Maybe I'd learn something. But follow where she led? No, no thank you.

I allowed her continue. What follows I will report word for word, as memory serves, so as to study her ludicrous proposition more closely. Just in case.

She began, "Do you know why you stood out this morning? I wasn't looking for you and I saw you and do you know why? Because you don't match. It's like you're a different species, or like you're in another dimension and it's just that people can see you. I know this, and I see this, because I live with it. It's my job, forming relationships fast, but those aren't real. The only thing that does to a person what you're suffering is complete and utter detachment."

Alright, so perhaps not entirely unrelated to what's been occupying my mind. All the more reason not to listen to her then; however she spotted my aloneness, she was using it against me. That's a cheap, obvious tactic, isn't it?

"Now, I know who you are, detective. And you'll like this; here are my deductions. You never imagined playing dead would hurt this much. You feel like you're suffocating inside that coffin every minute of every day. You want nothing more than to run back to somebody, one of them, and tell them everything in every detail. You make meticulous records and convince yourself it's just casework, but really it's just so everything isn't just in your head all the time. And because you're used to everything being recorded, aren't you? Stop me when I'm wrong."

In short, she told me I was lost without my… Damn it, no; it's not a joke… I hated her, but I didn't stop her.

"I'm not trying to humiliate you," she went on, and that's another cheap trick. It's like when someone finishes a sentence with 'to be honest'. It means they considered lying to you. "I'm only telling you this because I know what it's like. When I'm off the job I don't exist. And I've got a way we can both get what we need, Mr Holmes."

She must have known I was coming. She was too well-prepared, too well-thought-out. Scripted.

What follows I am loath to report, but in the interests of meticulous record-keeping I better not leave anything out. This isn't what she said, anymore. This is me, how I responded, how I replied.

Me, weakly, led like a lamb, "And what exactly would that be, then?"

The lady who had been Moriarty's chief spy sat opposite me at a scrubbed pine kitchen table in an entirely normal house in no particular town and said, with incredible honesty; "I get to exist again, and you get that little bit of contact, even if it's only by proxy." Seeing I still hadn't understood all the details she leaned forward over her tea and began to write a mobile number on my hand in blue biro. "Send me back. I'll be you. I'll keep a quiet eye on all your people, let you know what everybody's up to. You want to know they're alright, don't you? So you don't have to look so guilty all the time."

"Guilty? Why would I be guilty?" All the other questions I should have been asked, all the awful flaws, and that's the one I went with.

She shrugged, unruffled, "Leaving them? Lying to them? You tell me, detective; I only read the expression off you."

I left then. Despite everything I needed from her, despite what she claimed to know and how dangerous that made her, I left. Characteristically of our entire conversation, if you want to call it that, I didn't say anything.

And then I began to record, so that could hear it all again. So I could discuss with myself why I had to walk out like that, and why it's all so stuck in my head. Playing like a record.

Essentially, I wanted to get to the bottom of being able to recite her proposition word for word even long, distracted hours later. Why I haven't washed away the phone number.

Because I should call it, of course. Obviously. I should get her voice on record offering to illegally reconnoitre a number of stand-up London citizens. Naturally I should call it. I'll leave the tape running.

Hello?

What name will you be using? So that I can make… arrangements.

Glad you changed your mind. Hold the line a second; I've got fresh I.D. round here somewhere […] Hello?

I'm here.

Morstan. All arrangements to be made under the name Mary Morstan. How's that then?

That'll be fine.


	2. John

The first one was when he was lying there, on the pavement, and was dead. And I was saying, 'Move, I'm a doctor'. 'Get out of the way, I'm a doctor'. But it didn't take long to spot there was no doctor in the world who could fix what was wrong with him, why he wasn't moving, where the blood was coming from. I sat back and away. Other doctors came out from inside the hospital. I wanted to tell them to go back in. 'To send the streetsweeper instead'. I remember that thought distinctly. As black and callous as it sounds, I thought that. No point in just reporting the glories now, is there… Warts and all, I thought that.

Anyway, I'm excused; I was in shock. They put a blanket round me so I suppose I must have been in… Oh God.

But the first one happened when they tried to pick me up off that pavement. Just a twinge, first, and then the leg went out from beneath me. "Nothing," I said. And then, being a doctor in front of doctors, "Parathesia."

Or 'pins and needles', when you're not being a prick. When you're not covering up brokenness and loss with the biggest words you know.

But it wasn't parathesia. With pins-and-needles the limb goes numb and it wasn't numb. It hurt. And it was old pain, familiar pain, like a friend showing up on the doorstep. Hello, John. Been a while. It was pain that had never forgotten me, and, as it turned out, I'd never forgotten it either.

I kept an eye on it. Looking out for any more twinges, any signs. And I kept telling myself, in all those long dark days, that it's not real pain. It was never real pain. I made the word 'psychosomatic' my mantra. All in my head. Psychosomatic.

When they told me there wouldn't be a wake, or even an open coffin, I started spelling it out in my head. P-S-Y-C, just diverting enough energy and attention to keep the anger manageable. When the funeral had to be a furtive, secret affair, H-O-S-O, just dedicating a part of my brain to the mantra, that one word. And in all that time, the pain never happened again. Of course it didn't. It was never real pain to begin with, remember?

The second time was after the burial. I should have seen it coming. There's predictable and then there's old pain returning at a burial. The mistake, you see, was to speak to him. No, not to speak, to speak was fine, nothing wrong with speaking. It was to hear nothing back, that was the mistake, and that wasn't exactly his fault now, was it? It was silence. Silence brought it back the second time. But that time I didn't let myself fall. No, I was at the end of his grave and I wouldn't fall there. I stayed upright. And when I walked away I was walking through that ache, that dull, constant ache, feeling like a thing that was rusted and wrecked, but I walked.

In my head I was trying to spell it, M-A-T-I, but I never seemed to get to the end of the word. That's the thing about pain. You can tell yourself whatever you want about where it comes from. You can say it as many times as you like, 'Psychosomatic, all in my head', oh, a million times, you can say it more than a Hare Krishna praying, 'don't worry about it, it's not real', but you still feel it. Whether it's there or not, it still hurts.

Really, when you think about it, it's the ones in your head you need to be worried about, because no analgesic in the world is going to get to it. Believe me. I tried most of them.

People kept telling me how well I was coping. 'Holding up admirably'; I believe that one came from that celebrated font of empathy that is Mycroft Holmes. In the face of such a terrible loss, as well as all the press coverage, and the police inquiry into 'Richard Brooke' and the incident on the rooftop, people kept telling me how stunningly well I was coping with it all. There were days I could have cheerfully murdered the pack of them for even daring to think such a thing, for being so impossibly blind, so bloody, arrogantly, smilingly, bloody oblivious. Coping? I couldn't walk. Holding up? Just barely, and even that was only a physical effort.

Now there's a thesis. Psychosomatic sensation as coping mechanism. Because when you have to think through the action of every muscle and sinew just to keep above knee-height, there's not a lot of room in your head to get caught up with what you don't have anymore.

The third one, last strike, last chance, that happened at the flat. I was packing up some stuff. And every move I made, I was being watched, and I hated it. I hadn't wanted to touch them until then, but at that point I turned to the wall over the sofa, where the gunshots and graffiti were partially covered over with clippings from the Moriarty trial, from that godawful pack of lies that was published in the wake. Every few pictures, there were black eyes staring at me, deep with newsprint ink in the yellowing papers. Cold eyes, dozens of them.

Of course, he'd gone and topped himself too, hadn't he? Awfully convenient. You know, they say you're never truly alone in this world if you've got somebody to love, but somebody to hate would have done. That would have been enough for me, I could have made do with that. Something to focus on. Like a mantra. I could have traded up 'psychosomatic' for 'you bastard' and never had to worry about pain ever again.

I looked at these articles, so much press, so many stories and it struck me; I was only ever part of the story. Glad to be a part of it and an important part of it, and a part that he needed more than anybody ever felt the need to say aloud, but only ever a part of a story.

And then, one little bang, one little hop. There goes villain, there goes hero. And then what's the story anymore?

I tried to tear all that down. I put my knee up on the edge of the sofa to reach it all and fell. That time I fell. Landed on my elbow and felt the impact up into my shoulder, all across my ribs, fell hard and, for a time I don't like to think about, just stayed down.

After that, very discreetly, without a single word, Mrs Hudson left the stick on the landing outside. I hadn't even known it was still about. Hadn't thought about it in a long, long time. It lay on the coffee table and I sat in the armchair and stared at it. I told it, over and over again, and even out loud a couple of times, that I didn't want it. I told it the pain was psychosomatic.

And then I stood up, picked the stick up and started leaning on it. And rather than hire a van and move my own stuff out like I'd planned, I sent people round to collect the boxes. It was round about then I made the appointment too, with Ella. I'd been avoiding that too.

But the pain was back. The stick was back. The empty, wordless blog was back. There was only one more step back to square one and Ella was it. Maybe it was masochistic, just giving up like that, just jumping straight for that one. That occurred to me. Then I thought of lying on the floor in front of the sofa and not wanting to get up, and made the appointment.

Square one. That session, at her office, I did get upset. She was asking me about Sherlock and I was upset for the loss. But she was asking me about all that time too, since the last session, all that time between. Time that had passed without pain. There was no time for it. Time when all problems were solved by the fact that there were so many other problems to solve. Naturally I was upset. As much for the loss it was for square one.

It occurred me, Ella probably didn't know I'd been off the stick all that time. I never told her either

That was the lowest I got. I tried to walk home. I took twenty minutes to get to the corner of the street and from there I hailed a cab.

This whole process, by the way, had taken only three weeks. I'm ashamed of that. I shouldn't need to explain why. Suffice to say it is not the behaviour of a strong person, to lose all the benefits of eighteen months therapy in only three short weeks. To have come to the point where I could sit mournfully, selfishly in the back of a cab and all I'd want was a drink and a handful of something that was only meant to be two-a-day, in three weeks? I'm ashamed of that.

And people kept telling me I was coping.

The stairs up to the new flat took a while. An awful while, because the whole time I was thinking about the new flat, up there, waiting for me. It wasn't even new, and stank of the last owners. Of cigarette smoke. But it didn't smell of dust, and old carpets. There was no chance of opening the fridge to an overwhelming stink of formaldehyde or, more often, plain decay. The walls offended me more than anything. For one, they were visible. Nothing covered them, nothing was stuck up on them, except a mirror over the pointless hole in the wall that was a mock fireplace. The walls were beige, light and airy. They were entirely free from injury or scarification. The walls disgusted me, and stared at me worse than dozens of black eyes in newsprint ink. All day, and all night, they stared.

And yet, what choice did I have but to climb to them?

It was a low day. I won't make any bones about that.

So I came to the top of the stairs. After that things were easier. I could trip and shuffle along unobserved. No attempt to walk like a human being. I didn't feel like one, if I'm honest, so I didn't try. That is, until I saw the door before mine was open. There was light from its windows falling into the hall, carrying an indistinct shadow, taller than any real person and with too many edges. And there was a shuffling. And as I came to the edge of that light that fell, it got suddenly brighter.

A woman fell screaming out the door, with a pile of cardboard boxes collapsing after her, most of them on top of her. She landed on her back with a box spewing issues of National Geographic across her chest.

Her eyes were closed, so I dropped down to check if she was conscious. But after a few seconds she started to giggle, shifting her feet to kick kitchen utensils back over the doorway. She opened her eyes, saw me, and shut them again, "I can't believe you saw that."

"Are you alright? That looked nasty." My voice sounded strange to me. In weeks all I'd done was answer questions, respond to patronizing comments on how well I was holding up. Even with Ella, I hadn't had the heart to actually engage, to stage a conversation of any kind. Hadn't even wanted to go there. How long had it been since I'd voluntarily spoken to somebody?

She said, "Yeah. Lucky I already unpacked all the swords and lead weights… What on earth are you smiling at? I collect swords and lead weights." I cleared a box away from her legs. She sat up, pushing the magazines away, just kicking everything back inside. "Movers must've been about eight foot tall. They just put everything on top of each other."

I looked over the collapsed boxes. Looked like that was everything. And there wasn't much to it. My belongings hadn't amounted to much more, those few days earlier. "Well, you can reach it all now," I said, holding my hands down. I pulled her up when she took them, and turned her around; she'd hit the back of her head pretty hard on the skirting. And of course the idiot across the hall hadn't even opened the door to see what had happened.

"Really, I'll be alright."

"Please, I'm a doctor."

"You can't be. I'm never that lucky. Any time I get hurt I'm surrounded by bartenders and arts students and village idiots."

"That says more about where you hang around than it does about your luck." She laughed. Bright, genuine. Sort of a cackle, actually, but you could tell she meant it. But it also meant she didn't recognize me, didn't it? From the papers, from the television, she should have known my face. Known I was a doctor. So I kept her with her back to me, still pushing at her hair when I'd already found the bump. "What brings you here?"

"Just moving back. I've been studying shore life on the tiny Scottish isle of Iona for two years, if you can believe that… If I'm honest, there wasn't really two years study to be done, of the shore life of the tiny Scottish isle of Iona. Must say, it's nice to breathe filthy London air again."

I couldn't believe it. It was too good. But then again, she couldn't believe I was a doctor, could she?

So this time I let her turn back round, pointed at the mess in her doorway and told her, "You can't go back to all that right now."

"But… But I don't _feel_ concussed."

"No, but you _look_ in desperate need of a cup of tea."

She laughed. "Soon's I find my kettle."

"Don't bother. I'm quite sure where mine is."

She looked me over, top to bottom. Then, "Theoretically, if I was concussed, could you be all in my head?"

"Yes, but then I wouldn't be able to open my door and make tea, would I?"

"Oh, you're very good. You must be a doctor, after all."

So I went to open my door, and she knelt down, sweeping enough of her stuff inside to get her own closed. I heard her do it, but not move after that, not coming any closer. When I turned to see what was wrong, she was looking at the stick, leaning against the wall where she'd fallen. She pointed, "Is that yours?"

I held out my hand, took it off her. But I took it by the middle, carried it next to me like a snooker cue. "Sprained ankle."

"Oh. Well, we're just a right pair of ruins, aren't we?"

The stick changed hands so I could offer one to her. Human contact, warm skin, firm handshake. I told her, "Ruin called John."

"Ruin called Mary. Pair of ruins with boring names."

"We've a lot in common, it seems."

Following me inside, she laughed again, the same bright, heartfelt sound. It filled the place for a second. It fought off the staring walls, just a little bit. She said, "I'll bet we do."


End file.
